and happy have sought its chamber of discipline, feeling that it was as the "very gate of heaven." The smile of chastened resignation has a beauty, an eloquence, which the flush of prosperity may not boast. The young, seated by the pillow of such a monitor, are in the way of wisdom. Suffering endured with holy acquiescence, sublimates the character and conforms it to its Divine Exemplar.
Still I have thought it right to give a strong delineation of the disappointed earthly hope, which a broken constitution often creates, that I might incite mothers to early attention to the health of their daughters, "if by any means, I might provoke to emulation, these which are my flesh, and might save some of them."
But if to manhood, the influence of perpetual debility, in the partner of its joys, is so dispiriting, how much more oppressive is it to those little ones, who are by nature allied to gladness. Childhood, whose richest heritage is its innocent joy, must hush its sportive laugh, and repress its merry footstep, as if its plays were sins. Or if the diseased nerves of the mother, do not habitually impose such sacrifices, it learns from nature's promptings, to fashion its manners, or its voice, or its countenance, after the melancholy model of the sufferer whom it loves, and so forfeits its beautiful heritage of young delight. Those sicknesses to which the
